Rabbi Eric Yoffie has penned a Haaretz opinion piece directed at progressive, U.S. Jews that is so deluded and insidious, it’s as though it was written in the same political and psychological vacuum inhabited by Netanyahu’s government.

Yoffie, former head of the Union for Reform Judaism, argues that progressives should champion Israel’s “get tough” Gaza stance. It’s a call he makes using shockingly misguided and narrow arguments. It’s a call I, and all progressives, should reject.

Here’s why:

First, Yoffie fails to understand the strategic motivations behind Israel’s current “Pillar of Defense” campaign. He thinks it’s all about security – that the targeted assassination of Ahmed Jaabari, a top Hamas commander, as well as the countless bombs killing militants and civilians alike in Gaza are to protect Israeli citizens from a dangerous, militant Hamas.

They are not.

The truth is this: Israel has engaged in its current, escalating military campaign not to protect Israelis from a militant Hamas, but in order to ensure that Hamas in Gaza remains militant. See, while Jaabari was a known terrorist who had his hand in the Gilad Shalit kidnapping, he was also the Hamas leader both willing and capable of enforcing ceasefire agreements. In fact, as Gershon Baskin writes in “Assassinating the Chance for Calm,” Jaabari was considering a ceasefire proposal the moment he was assassinated. And Baskin should know, for he was working closely with Hamas officials on the proposal itself.

So why would Israel assassinate a Hamas official, a move guaranteed to provoke extreme outrage and revenge, at a time when Hamas leaders were working on a ceasefire? The answer is simple and twofold: a) Netanyahu’s government wants a militant Hamas in Gaza; it wants a situation in which Gaza becomes isolated from the West Bank, hoping eventually Greater Israel will be obtained with Gaza becoming a separate entity, and b) with Israeli elections set for January, electoral motivations are undeniably in play with regard to this sudden military barrage.

This has happened before, this tactic to destroy a cease fire and stoke militant extremism. And it’s a tactic I know intimately. See, in 2002, my wife was injured in the bombing of Hebrew University in Jerusalem. The bombing, carried out by Hamas, was a revenge attack for Israel’s targeted assassination of a top Hamas terrorist, Sheikh Salah Shehada. The rub? This assassination came 90 minutes after Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Palestinian Authority’s Tanzim had agreed on a long-term ceasefire agreement that included a historic call from all organizations to end all terror attacks on civilians.

In 2002, Ariel Sharon launched an Israeli offensive when Palestinians were on the cusp of an historic ceasefire. Today, Netanyahu has done something similar. Both moments share a singular motivation: ensuring that Hamas remains a militant enemy. It is a desire Hamas has been all too willing to oblige for its own political gain, willing to accept the self-destructive, symbiotic relationship Israel offers repeatedly. Yes, Hamas is equally culpable in accepting Israel’s hand in continuing a cycle of violence. But that culpability does not validate Yoffie’s position. Instead, it weakens it all the more.

The second reason to reject Yoffie’s “progressive” call is due to his stunningly misguided read on the human toll in Gaza. While Yoffie is right to be concerned and devastated about the suffering of Jewish civilians being injured and killed by rocket attacks from Gaza, he is wholly blind to the suffering of those in Gaza. In fact, Yoffie paints a picture of a Hamas that brutalizes Israeli civilians with rocket fire, and an Israel that always responds ethically and “with modest force” such that Palestinian suffering is minimal.

Anyone with even a limited understanding of what life in Gaza is like right now knows that Palestinian suffering is intense and overwhelming. Millions of people are being terrorized by one-ton bombs falling incessantly in residential areas, and scores of civilians – including young children – have been injured and killed so far. And those injured are unable to receive proper medical attention due to medicine and supply shortages caused by Israel’s blockade of Gaza, itself a brutal and ever-present stranglehold.

The third reason to reject Yoffie’s progressive call is because of the psychological place from whence his entire stance actually comes. In the end of his essay, he reveals why he believes everyone should support tough, massive military responses:

Israel came into being so that Jewish children would never again have to huddle together in fear, terrorized by enemies of the Jewish people, while their parents stood by helplessly. Helping those children is a progressive cause. And doing nothing for them undermines the sovereignty of the Jewish state and strikes a fatal blow at the very raison d’etre of Zionism.

The tragic irony, an irony Yoffie even recognizes is his post? It’s this: Jewish families are huddled right now, being terrorized by a barrage of Hamas rockets, precisely because of “tough” Israeli response for which Yoffie advocates. And it’s a position he advocates not out of wisdom, but out of those psychological demons that still haunt us from the Holocaust – demons which magnify Jewish victimhood such that brutalizing another people becomes a justifiable, even necessary position.

For in it, he shows the correlation between Israeli Jews’ fear of annihilation (as a people) and the unwillingness to empathize or negotiate with the Palestinians — making it a competition for victimhood, a zero-sum game.

Most interestingly, the study also shows that Israeli Jews who fear for their own personal safety are just as willing to compromise and negotiate with Palestinians as those who fear no personal harm. It’s the national fear of destruction that paralyzes everyone.

This article is insightful and fair. It explains the strategy and the history of the strategy of Israel toward the Palestinians as well as concedes Hamas culpability in continuing the cycle of violence. But who is being killed? Palestinian children. This is terrorism perpetrated by Israel.

I agree with “oldschooltwentysix”‘s entry: this is just another case of blaming Israel for all of the problems between Israelis and Palestinians, in spite of all evidence to the contrary.

re Gershon Baskin’s claim in Haaretz that Hamas was on the verge of agreeing to a comprehensive cease fire with Israel: if this is the case, why did Hamas increase the rate of firing rockets into Israel during the time when this alleged cease fire was being negotiated? And has anybody else besides Gershon (on either the Israeli or Palestinian side) backed up his version of events?

re Ariel Sharon’s 2002 military action “when Palestinians were on the cusp of an historic ceasefire”, the idea that such a cease fire was being negotiated is complete news to me and I’ve been living in Israel since 1996. As I recall it, Israel’s military action which put down the 2nd Intifada in 2002 came when terrorist bombings were occurring on a weekly basis, and specifically after a horrible suicide bombing of a Pesach Seder in Netanya which left more than 20 killed and scores wounded. And btw, Ariel Sharon also spearheaded Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from Gaza which did not result in any kind of reciprocal peace overtures from any Palestinian political entity.

The situation re Gaza is very sad, and bound to get even more sad. However, as Tony Blair, William Hague, Catherine Ashton and Angela Merkel all agree, Hamas clearly deserves the blame for the current round of fighting, and Israel is justified in protecting its citizens.

Note: I hold dual US/Israeli citizenship and have lived in Israel since 1996, having come here in hopes of making a personal contribution to the Oslo peace process. I now regard myself as a “recovering Oslo supporter” and have spent a good portion of this weekend reassuring my 11 year old twins that they need not be scared.

Here’s the website for my friends at the hagar bicultural jewish arab school in beersheba where the parents and kids have been facing cancelled classes, sleeping in shelters and the trauma of constant missiles for at least a month before the IDF offensive. Unless you call a “harsh response” the iron dome/kipat habarzel I think they would be curious which harshe response by Israel caused those attcks…targeted at Israeli citizens…jewish and arab of course.

Here’s the website www,hajar.org,il Maybe you want to send them a check for a shelter for the pre school just in case the peace seeking hamas folks decide to keep lobbing missiles

Dear Rabbi Michael Lerner,
Why is David Duke being allowed to write his vile hatred of Jews?
He is a rancid anti-semite and a Nazi thug.
Please delete the comment by David Duke-he is not a “Tikkun Supporter” but simply a FACIST.